Summary

Today, more and more Europeans want to buy products that have little impact on the environment. Increasingly, many won’t buy unless nature is protected. WWF is working to restore and maintain key landscapes and habitats throughout Europe by identifying opportunities where the interests of business and nature overlap, and forging innovative partnerships to take advantage of these opportunities.

Currently, there are a number of sites where companies, farmers and conservationists are developing win-win situations where economic and ecological concerns go hand in hand. They include: Doñana (Spain), Tisza floodplain (Hungary), Maramures (Romania), the Ardennes (Spain), Gelderse Poort (the Netherlands), Prespa (Greece), Sinca Noua (Romania) and Väinameri (Estonia).

Objectives

- Set up a network of model pilot projects spread over Europe, gaining experience with various regional partners and with financing mechanisms for nature and landscape. These pilots can also include non-WWF activities. In all cases pilots should demonstrate the ideas of One Europe More Nature and follow approaches which offer a European-scale perspective.

- Use these results to influence public opinion and the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

- Create awareness among European consumers that they contribute to the quality of nature and landscape by their (purchasing) behaviour.

Solution

Nature conservation increasingly needs to ‘step out of the comfort zone’ and forge new types of partnerships with new types of stakeholders. OEMN attempts to place nature at the heart of everyday life for rural communities in 7 countries by innovative economic mechanisms which work for people, business and nature.

Partners include: multinational supermarkets, a biomass producing power station, tourism operators, farmers, forest and water managers, a brick company, local, regional and national governments, and local communities in Belgium, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Netherlands, Romania and Spain.